Update: In an interview with the IDG News Service, Bill Hilf, general manager for platform strategy at Microsoft, spoke about both Sun and Novell deals and about how the company regards open-source software.
Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer signified the collaboration agreements between Microsoft and Novell as a clever deal to bridge Microsoft community and open source community. He said “we don’t license our intellectual property to Linux because of the way the Linux licensing, GPL framework works, that’s not really a possibility”.
As in the case of national politics, there is always going to be about 20% hard supporter for Microsoft and Linux respectively. There are 5% or so not buying in any of them and the rest or 55% a bit “opportunistic” because they believe the cost is the same no matter which one they choose - the difference is only in the cost component.
These 55% demand interoperability between Microsoft products and the open source products. However, Microsoft wants to be paid so badly for its intellectual property (IP) which takes years and millions of dollars to build that it avoids the issue for years.